Lifting the Ban Would Do a Rank Disservice

As would-be presidential advisors go, the gay rights movement is nothing if not cheeky.

The Michael Palm Center, a “think tank” in California at UC Santa Barbara that gives academic cover to the campaign to bring open homosexuality to our nation’s armed forces, issued a 29-page memo in May.

The short of it is that they want President Obama to issue an executive order to get around the law passed by Congress in 1993.

They don’t want hearings. They don’t want the issue debated. They especially don’t want generals and admirals to inform weak-kneed congresspersons about why it’s not good to encourage open homosexuality in the barracks or aboard ships. In Self-Inflicted Wound, another Palm report issued in July, they offer this advice to Obama:

“…[I]n terms of their capacity to make trouble, it is the legislative process that would open a can of worms by allowing military leaders to testify at hearings and forge alliances with opponents on the Hill. A swift executive order would eliminate opportunities for them to resist.”

Did you catch that last phrasing? Can’t you just picture Barney Frank dressed as Caesar, telling the military brass and their pro-family allies, “Friends, it is futile to resist!” That would be enough to scare the Al-Qaeda militants back to their caves.

The Palm crew is right to fear public testimony by military leaders. More than 1,050 former generals and admirals, including more than 50 four-stars, have signed a petition urging the retention of the ban on homosexuality.

For his part, Obama promised gay rights militants the moon in his Oct. 11 speech to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), from signing a hate crimes law, enacting a gay jobs bill (ENDA), overturning the Defense of Marriage Act, appointing more openly homosexual federal officials to lifting the military ban on homosexuality. Did he leave out anything?